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Garth Callaghan has been leaving inspirational notes with his daughter's lunch since her days in kindergarten—but now that he's dying of cancer, they both know that one day the notes will have to stop. So he's writing hundreds of them ahead of time to fulfill his promise of giving 13-year-old Emma a daily note until she graduates from high school, Gawker reports. The Virginia man needs 826 in all; so far he has 740. "At the end of the day, these notes might be the only thing my daughter has left of me," he tells the Richmond Times-Dispatch. Among his notes:

"Dear Emma, Everything in moderation. Except Awesome. You can never have too much Awesome. Love, Dad"

"Dear Emma, Sometimes when I need a miracle, I look into your eyes and realize I've already created one. Love, Dad"

Doctors give him only an 8% chance of living another 5 years, and he recalls being heartbroken one day after surgery when he saw that Emma had ripped up one of his napkins. But it turned out that she was just tearing out parts he had written on and saving them in her composition book. "My daughter’s a teenager now, so at some point, the notes might cease to be cool," he said. But at this point, "for her and I, this is a special thing that we share." Click to see more notes on his webpage, Facebook page, or Twitter feed.

This is such a great story, as it reminded me of all the good my parents instilled in me. Although it seems as if they left just yesterday, I lost my mom 31 years ago to lung cancer and my dad passed away 5 years ago of heart failure. To the dad, your daughter will remember you for far more than just the notes. She will be grateful for every memory of you and thankful you were her dad. She will have some of your traits in her personality and be proud of them. Realizing that will give her comfort. To the daughter, spend as much time with your dad as possible now because he has such a short time left on earth but you have your whole life ahead of you. He is your guardian now but will become your guardian angel. When he passes thank God he gave you as much time as he did with your dad. Stay strong, your dad will always be with you. Make him proud!